Thaw
by Carly Chameleon
Summary: A oneshot for the 2014 Doomies Unite Winter Challenge. Haggar, recovering from the injuries she sustained while scattering Voltron to pieces, reflects on everything she's lost. Worksafe and rather sentimental really.


**Inevitable disclaimer: Voltron, its characters and concepts, are property of/copyrighted by World Event Productions, Ltd., Toei Animation, and Devil's Due Publishing. I am affiliated with none of these and make no profit from this work of fanfiction. In other words, please, please don't sue me.**

**No warnings for sex or violence. **

**Wow. I can't believe I just typed that...Ahem. Comments and/or critique welcome!**

Waking, in many ways, was worse than dying.

Though she tried to fight it, to remain submerged in the womb-like safety of sleep, consciousness seeped its way into the crevasses of her mind. Forcing her to think. Remember. Feel.

A small whimper came from the back of Haggar's throat and she made the effort to pull the covers up over her head. Even that small movement caused her skin beneath the protection of the plasticoat bandages to burn and itch. The worst of her wounds had closed, but the scar tissue left behind made her flesh feel stretched drum-tight over her bones, ready to tear at the slightest wrong move. Her indigo hair, scraggly and coarse as broom ends against the satin pillowcase, had only recently started growing back. While she'd broken the power of the legendary mecha Voltron, splitting him into five parts scattered across the planet Arus, the feat had nearly destroyed her in the bargain.

Yet she had done it for the glory of the Galra Empire. For the honor of her bloodline.

For love.

As though of its own volition, her hand slid across the silk sheets to touch the space on the mattress next to her. Cold and empty, like her days now.

She had done it for nothing.

With a strangled cry, Haggar flung the blankets back. The sharp movement caused more flares of pain, and she felt a patch of fragile new skin along her bicep tear. It didn't matter. She needed to get up, to move, to do something other than dwell on what she'd lost. Rising from the bed proved a cumbersome labor. Her mouth curled into a bitter smile. Though in the bloom of her youth, she'd been reduced to struggling to get out of bed like a crone. Joints stiff, spine hunched, Haggar shuffled to the closet and pulled out a quilted lavender robe, wrapping it around herself to ward off the chill that had invaded the room. After tying the sash around her waist, she made her way to one of the large windows set in the northern wall of her suite.

Fresh snow covered the grounds of the estate as far as she could see from the vantage point of the second floor. Haggar squinted against the glare of sunlight reflecting off the blanket of white, yellow eyes watering slightly. The sensation gave her some small satisfaction; a few weeks ago her tear ducts would have still been too damaged to produce anything. She was healing, physically at least.

The snow softened the starkness of the bare trees planted in rows along a buried path. It also provided shrouds for the corpses of the former governor of the estate, her family, and members of the staff hanging from the branches as both warning and war trophies. The Nevalteans had fought fiercely against the might of the burgeoning empire, and an example had to be made. They would swing there for a couple of months yet, preserved by the cold.

A view to suit her mood.

She didn't know why she'd come to this place. It wasn't as though she had contributed much besides directing some bumbling engineering underlings on the finer points of deploying a robeast during the final battle.

No…that wasn't true. If she allowed herself to think about it, she knew exactly why she'd come. While she had somehow endured the pain of being shut out of the emperor's affections, and watched as a human slave had borne his heir, the one calamity Haggar couldn't have withstood was being completely forgotten. Her injuries had already cost her two months away from court and her lab. Not to mention shown her that she would never win back the emperor's love.

One couldn't lose what one had never really had in the first place.

Fogging up one of the window panes with her sigh, Haggar rested her forehead against the glass, its chill welcome to her skin. Her hopes and desires had been delusions, she knew that now. It was no more than she deserved. She had been charged with the task of cultivating the Galra genetic line, not trying to become part of it. Yet the blood of Sarga flowed through Zarkon's veins as strongly as it did hers, and like called to like. She had believed herself worthy enough to create a powerful, perfect child with him. And she had paid for such hubris, with her body, mind, and heart.

Movement in the corner of Haggar's vision disturbed her clear, merciless view of the past. Two figures, one breathtakingly tall and broad with muscle, the other made even more delicate and breakable beside the first. Phantoms of warm breath drifted from their mouths out into the crisp Nevaltean air. Morning sunlight shimmered in the smaller's gold streamers of hair. The larger's skin showed blue-violet, not from cold but by design. Realization wrung a groan out of Haggar. She clutched her quivering hands with their stumpy, half-regrown nails to her breast to keep her heart from pounding its way out of her ribs, crashing through the window, and throwing itself in the path of the pair below.

No doubt Emperor Zarkon would have simply trod on it as he followed his human wife out toward the trees and their grisly decorations. A corner of Haggar's withered upper lip curled into a sneer. No, not wife—his concubine and eternal source of chagrin. The woman continued to refuse his constant stream of proposals even after all these years, although that had never stopped her from having all the airs and moods of a rightful empress. She trudged through the knee-high snow, nearly tumbling over a few times while she fought to lift her legs high enough to clear the stuff. Her jaw jutted at a proud, stubborn angle, arms pumping with the fists clenched. Furious once again over something her would-be husband had said or done. For his part, he trailed in her wake, his superior height and strength making it an easy matter, the snow parting like mist around the calves of his boots. He overtook her without difficulty, catching her beneath the arms and lifting her into the air. Haggar heard the woman's enraged curses all the way from there. Her fists hammered at Zarkon's back and shoulders, his laughter mingling with her shouts while he carried her to the nearest tree, pinning her against it with his body. One hand deftly started to unbutton her coat. The other gripped the back of her head, holding her still to receive his kiss. Haggar felt the ghost of his fingers glide over the scarred flesh between her own breasts, the echo of warmth from his skin, and the rasp of the swordsman's calluses across his palms and fingertips.

Gradually, the hateful woman softened under his onslaught. Her struggles ceased, fists uncurling, hands sliding up into his hair, legs brazenly wrapping around his torso.

Though the window she gazed through was shut tight like the rest, the heavy drapes stirred from the swirl of a newborn breeze in the room. It gained strength, tugging at her robe, rattling the framed bits of art clinging to the walls, sending the vase of wilted flowers on the mantelpiece crashing to the hearth. It howled and shrieked, giving voice to Haggar's outrage. Like a gale from the depths of hell it blew searing and unrelenting, with her trembling in the center.

She could kill them with a flex of her will. Suck the living heat from their joined bodies, leave them cold and stiff. Command the snow to swallow them up, entomb them together until spring, when ravenous nature would strip their flesh to bare, entwined bones.

Instead, Haggar jerked the heavy drapes across the window before she had to witness any more of the revolting scene. Stomach twisting inside of her like a dying animal, she turned away, the sorcerous cyclone tapering off to a gust, then a gasp, and finally stillness.

So Zarkon had looked at her broken, burnt body with disgust as she'd laid in agony on the med-tech table. What did she care? He hadn't wanted her since he'd captured his human whore. Regardless, he needed Haggar and always would. She might not hold his heart, but she did hold the keys to his future and that of his bloodline's. As long as she had that, nothing else mattered. She would be as indifferent and unmoved as the frozen corpses swinging from the branches outside.

Something hot slipped down one of her cheeks, then the other, leaving a stinging trail whenever they touched half-healed skin. Putting a hand to her face, Haggar discovered her fingers came away wet. She stared at the shining tears she'd caught as if they were made from some unearthly substance. Such useless things. A waste. They had no reason to exist.

More tears trickled down to prove her wrong. With them came a quiver in her limbs, a curious hitch in her breath. Her chest felt like it was being slowly crushed between a giant, remorseless thumb and forefinger.

The first crack in the thin ice encasing her heart stung as acutely as the lash of a whip. Another followed the first, then a third, fourth, more—until it could stand the pressure no longer. All the pain, despair, and resentment it had locked away sluiced down her cheeks. Haggar sank down on the plush carpet of her empty suite and wept in silence. She cried until she felt hollow and exhausted, her soul scoured raw.

So, naturally, she didn't notice the knocking at her door right away.

When the almost tentative rapping sound at last registered in her flat-lined thoughts, Haggar found herself tottering to her feet and drifting to the door on the authority of some automatic response. The same impulse had her dabbing at her wet, swollen face with the sleeves of her robe before reaching for the knob. A thought flashed through her numb brain, causing her heart's rhythm to stutter.

It was Zarkon on the other side. He or his woman had noticed her spying on them in the window and he had come to taunt her for her pathetic voyeurism, her chasing what she would never have—

Yanking open the door, she did find herself staring into familiar gold eyes, but they didn't belong to the emperor.

"Prince Lotor," she said, most of her surprise masked by the croak in her voice.

"Good morning, Lady Haggar." The boy gave her a nod with an air of gravity far beyond his nine years. Even as he did so, his gaze took in her scabrous skin, the likely puffy state of the skin around her eyes, her dull expression. Life in his father's court had taught him that survival hinged largely on his ability to read any situation.

"I didn't mean to disturb you," the young prince continued. "I will leave if this is not a good time…"

"No!" The word burst from her like a desperate prayer. "No," she said again with more sanity. "I've just woken is all, so my mind is still blunt around the edges. Is there something you require of me, my prince?"

Lotor hesitated, stare flickering over her in another assessment. His eyes reflected no disgust, no scorn, and praise be to the gods, no pity. Only a wariness drilled into him by a father who demanded ruthless perfection and a mother who viewed him as a curse as much as a comfort.

His scrutiny detecting nothing false in her words, the boy showed her the holotab in his hand. "My tutors have assigned me a more advanced set of equations. I believe I've figured them out, but…" He shrugged, but he wouldn't meet her eyes. "Since you're an engineer and biochemist, I thought it would be easy for you to tell me if I'm right or not."

Though it hurt her patchwork skin, Haggar didn't stop a slow smile from spreading across her ruined face. She stepped aside. "Come in, my prince. I will send for some breakfast and we'll have a look at those equations of yours."

Some of the rigid formality leaking from his posture, Lotor entered at her bidding. He frowned and chaffed his arms as he stood in the middle of the room. "It's freezing in here, Haggar. Don't you know it snowed during the night?"

"I noticed," she answered, a wry twist creeping into her smile. "Have a seat at the table there and I'll get a fire going. No, don't pull back the drapes—the lighting in here will do. There, see? I don't care much for sunshine myself, especially when it's glaring off the snow."

While they spoke, ate, then spoke some more, buried emotions began to sprout in the barren wastes of her heart, tender as new grass shoots. Yet they reminded her.

Everything died. Everything ended, and everything was destroyed.

It also revived. Began. Was created anew eventually. Like the child sitting across from her, delight blooming on his face as she unraveled the secrets of numbers and formulae with him, the past became the future and the cycle started over again. She would guide the boy, as she had guided his father. Perhaps they would grow close—she was the reason he'd been born at all, as surely as if she'd carried him herself. And while she did her duty, her wounds, inside and out, would heal. It would be slow. It would be difficult. But it would _be_.

Even the darkest winters had to give way to spring.

**A/N: So this was a bit off the beaten path for me. I'm not used to doing short, introspective, or angsty/sentimental pieces, and though this is far from perfect, I wound up liking the results enough to post. I hope you found something about it enjoyable too. :)**

**A couple of things you might have been wondering about: I'm going to say this is set in the same universe as Lionheart. It takes place a little before Zarkon bombs Arus for the first time. My version of him does have hair, though why it's never seen by the Voltron Force is something I plan to explain in Lionheart. As for his would-be wife's reaction to him...suffice to say that they have a complicated relationship at best, and I'll explore that in a future story. There will also be plenty of Haggar too, of course.**

**Thanks for reading!**


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